The great feature of the religion taught by the Tantras is the worship of Sakti—Divine power personified as a female, and individualised, not only in the goddesses of mythology, but in every woman: to whom, therefore, in her own person religious worship may be and is occasionally addressed. The chief objects of adoration, however, are the manifold forms of the bride of Siva; Parvati, Uma, Durga, Kali, Syama, Vindhya-vasini, Jaganmata, and others. Besides the usual practices of offerings, oblations, hymns, invocations, the ritual comprises many mystical ceremonies and accompaniments, gesticulations and diagrams, and the use in the commencement and close of the prayers of various monosyllabic ejaculations of imagined mysterious import. Even in its last exceptionable division it comprehends the performance of magical ceremonies and rites, intended to obtain super-human powers, and a command over the spirits of heaven, earth, and hell. The popular division is, however, called by the Hindus themselves, the _left-hand_ Sakta faith. It is to this that the bloody sacrifices offered to Kali must be imputed; and all the barbarities and indecencies perpetrated at the Durga Puja, the annual worship of Durga, and the Churuk Puja, the swinging festival, are to be ascribed. There are other atrocities which do not meet the public eye. This is not a random foundationless charge, we have the books describing the rites and ceremonies, some of them are in print, veiled necessarily in the obscurity of the original language, but incontrovertible witnesses of the veracity of the charge. Of course no respectable Hindu will admit that he is a Vamachari, a follower of the left-hand ritual, or that he is a member of a society in which meat is eaten, wine is drunk, and abominations not to be named are practised. The imputation will be indignantly denied, although, if the Tantras be believed, “many a man who calls himself a Saiva, or a Vaishnava, is secretly a Sakta, and a brother of the left-hand fraternity.”[12] [12] Wilson’s Lectures. The worshippers of Sakti have always been divided into two classes, a right and a left-hand order, and three sub-divisions of the latter were enumerated, who until lately were still well known—the Purnabhishiktas, Akritarthas, Kritakrityasamas.